A federal court jury Tuesday handed New Jersey
pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. Inc. a victory in the
latest of more than 16,000 lawsuits alleging the company
failed to give adequate warning to doctors that Vioxx, a
popular painkiller it took off the market in 2004, posed a
heart attack risk.

After a two-week trial and just over two hours of
deliberating, jurors rejected the claim of Kentucky resident
Robert Garry Smith, 57, that his heart attack in February
2003 was caused by Vioxx, which he'd taken for about
four months for arthritis pain.